All of this increasing critique of corporate globalization --
we should always use the adjective -- comes from a long overdue
pattern of research to discern the systems of control. Make no
mistake about it. Although the shibboleths of free trade are
tossed in front of an often misinformed media, the issue with
the IMF and World Trade Organization and World Bank is governance.
It's the governance systems for global corporations that we're
really dealing with.
The
fundamental issue we face is the autocratic systems of
governance that undermine democracy, that subordinate human
rights and the rights of people for decent standards of living
and for decent standards of justice. This is what is at
stake here: Challenging international systems of autocratic
governance that serve, overwhelmingly, the interests of giant
global corporations who dominate and seek to dominate
everything in their path.
They
want to dominate governments. They want to dominate the
workplace. They want to dominate the marketplace. They want to
dominate the universities by corporatizing them. They want to
dominate the very concept of childhood with their brazen
commercial exploitation of small children. They want to
dominate the shaping of the environment. They want to control
the genes of the natural world. They want to control the human
genes. They want to control the seeds. They want to control the
future.
We
have to make sure that this relentless drive for control
by the commercial instinct -- which every major religion in the
world has warned us about for two thousand years --
should never be given excessive power. Because in its singular
focus and drive and lack of respect for other values, it
destroys these other values in a paroxysm of greed that implodes
on itself.

Ralph Nader's indefatigable commitment to accept the responsibility to
bequeath to future generations a society that we can be proud of and
one that uplifts the rest of the world is a great beacon for others.

Inspired by the emphasis he has put on the year 2000 Corporate
Presidential Campaign, we provide here some transcripts that
call out the best within us to actively participate in shaping
the directions and priorities of our society. Speaking on CSPAN
on September 4th, Nader said the Green Party was winning in the
sense of inspiring young people to become further involved in
the governmental process. Likewise, this is one of the
essential facts of what transpired in Seattle last November-December,
at the World Bank/IMF meeting in Washington D.C. this April,
at each of the duopoly's conventions this summer, as well as
in many other gatherings from around the globe (see the list in
Ending Corporate
Governance & co-globalizing gaia's children upcoming events
for some of these).

I'm sure the Green Party is going to have the best renewable energy
policy of any party, even better than it had in prior years. And it
will be a luminous contrast to the Clinton-Gore Administration who
have pretty much ignored the need to reverse the Reagan-Bush years
and stop subsidizing oil, gas, coal, and nuclear and start supporting
the expansion of wind power and photovoltaics and solar, thermal,
etc. It is interesting that Gore wrote about this in his book in 1992.
No one knew more about it as an elected official than Gore. However
he has not made a single statement on solar energy in over seven years
in office. That's an example of someone who knows, but is unwilling
to act because of who his pay-masters are in the political sphere.

Giant projects funded on the western model do not work in third
world countries. Poverty can be alleviated only by cottage-level
projects. For example, look what happened in our country at its
best -- and why don't we project that for models of economic
development with proper indigenous inputs, of course. We had land
reform -- it's called the Homestead Act of 1863. It broke up the
potential for giant plantations as occurred in the south. What
people in the third world need is land reform -- fundamental land
reform. They need systems that encourages land used to grow food
for needy and hungry people. Not to grow cash crops to be exported to
the west to earn hard currency to pay debts to foreign banks.
The
second is microcredit. The democratization of credit which
occurred in our country with credit unions, agricultural credit
banks, producer credit banks in the farm area. They don't need
these giant loans to oligarchs and governments that misuse them
and only entrenches the oligarchs and the dictatorial regimes.
They need the democratization of credit. It goes right to people
-- $200, $300, $100 like the Grameen Bank has shown
-- which by the way, was not an IMF idea, was it?

The fact is that in the first World War, 95% of the people
killed were combatants. Today in the wars going on in the world,
90% of those wars are fought with small guns and 90% of the
people killed are non-combatants, that is women and
children. That is people out there working the fields. That
is people who are mowed down. I believe that we must
have a foreign policy, which does not give or sell guns to
people with human rights violations.
We
must stand up righteously in the world. Anywhere you go if
you are American or a person like me who lives on this
continent and you go around the world and often hear these
stories. I've been privileged. I went to the World Parliament of
Religions. I went to the UN Conference on the Status of Women.
You hear these stories and you just cry. You hear those stories
and you say, "What could I do to help you?" They say `Change
your government's policies. Change what your government does.
Do not send us used clothes. Do not adopt our children. Change
your government's policies.' That is the courage and the
opportunity we have in the world.
We
are the people who could change the fate of many people
throughout this world by having the courage to change America.
That is the vision that we have. Not only in this election,
but each day of our lives. That is a vision that we share
and that we work on each day of our lives. That is a vision
that I'm committed to. To make that change for the future
generations.

Do you want to waste your vote? You
can waste your vote by voting for two political
parties that are wasting our democracy and the great
opportunities of our country. If you want to waste your vote --
if you don't like the two party politics and their being beholden
to corporate power, which has resulted in a sovereignty of
corporations over the sovereignty of people in this country --
and you go to the polling booths and vote for either a
Republican or a Democrat, you are basically saying, `We don't
like where you going, but we're going to vote for you anyway.'
What do you think they are going to say to you, implicitly?
They are going to say, `You're a sucker.' They are going to
say, `You have got no where to go. We're taking you for granted.'
And therefore, you're taken. . . .
The
We have plenty of these ideas and many, many more. But
only if we strengthen the roots of our democracy by
our mind, our spirit, and our resolve never to allow a brief,
euphoric moment of civic enthusiasm to wither away. But to
fuel a steadfast sense of determination, day-after-day,
week-after-week, until we not only have a higher estimate of
our own significance but until we say to future generations,
`We are the generation that did not refuse to carry the
cudgels and to assume the responsibility to bequeath to you
a society that you can be proud of and one that uplifts the
rest of the world.'

We live now in an apartheid economy. It is an
economy of such staggering inequities that mere words and
statistics hardly can do it justice. It is an economy where one
man, Bill Gates, has as much wealth as the combined wealth of
the bottom 120 million Americans. . . . The 250 richest
people in the world have the combined income of the bottom
three billion people in the world. To give a further
illustration, the top 1 percent of the richest people in our
country have wealth -- financial wealth equal to the bottom 95 percent. . . .
The
UN Development Program [reports that] for $40 billion a year,
applied to the needy of the world, they can provide
basic sanitation and drinking water safety, basic nutritional
needs, basic health care and significant education for these
children. That's $40 billion a year in the same world that
spends $850 billion a year on military equipment.
This
is, in a sense, a message of hope, is it not?
It's a message that if we can get enough civic power to
redirect some of the enormous tax dollars that go to corporate
subsidies, giveaways, handouts, bailouts, and that go for the
military machine driven by corporate profits of Lockheed Martin
and General Dynamics and others, we could redirect some of
these monies to accelerate at unheard of levels the well-being
of the oppressed and the impoverished and the desperate people
and children in this world. . . .
In
education the tyranny of standardized testing is becoming
the be-all and do-all for principals and teachers and school
districts. It is distorting the whole curriculum. We first
blew the top off standardized testing fraud in 1980 with a
study on the Educational Testing Service. We found there was
an invincible correlation between test scores and family
income. We also found that these tests are straitjackets.
They don't recognize
multiple
intelligences. They don't recognize the assets that people
have that spell success in life. Do they measure determination?
Do they measure stamina, creativity, idealism, wisdom,
judgment, experience? They don't. Now they're becoming a yoke
on our school system where school districts, principals,
teachers all measured by test scores and guess who develops
these tests? Corporate consulting firms who have their eye on
the public school system of America in order to corporatize
them.

To the youth of America, I say, beware of being trivialized by
the commercial culture that tempts you daily. I hear you saying
often that you're not turned on to politics. The lessons
of history are clear and portentous. If you do not turn on to
politics, politics will turn on you. The fact that we have so
many inequalities demonstrates this point. Democracy responds
to hands-on participation. And to energized imagination. That's
its essence. We need the young people of America to move into
leadership positions to shape their future as part of this campaign
for a just society. Let's prepare to take the politicians
and the lobbyists on a tour of the People's America.
Two
premises are basic to this political campaign. First, that
a basic function of leadership is to generate more leaders, not
more followers. Secondly, this political movement is first and
foremost movement of thought, not of belief. There is nothing
wrong with beliefs but it would be better to have them preceded
by thought and followed by action. By debating, phoning,
e-mailing, and marching during the next four months, we the
people will grow a new political start, a green plant pushing
up between the two fossil parties.

The central contention of politics should be the distribution
of power. That is where a political campaign should be first and
foremost. The most important question that a candidate can ask
the people during the campaign is, "Do you want to be more
powerful as a voter, citizen, consumer, worker, taxpayer, and
small saver-investor? Or do you want to continue to be rolled
and dominated and manipulated by the concentration of power and
wealth in too few hands who then establish the supremacy of the
political economy over the majority of the people in this
country?"
That
is really the question. Because if the people in this
country do not want to be more powerful as they interact
in the workplace, the marketplace, the environment, their
communities, their legislatures, their courts, their executive
branch agencies, the corporations, through the various
stakeholder rights that they should be given, then no political
leaders, no political parties are going to be able to do
anything more than promise what they cannot deliver. That is
the fundamental point: That even if you look at political
candidates around the country and say, I think these candidates
are well-intentioned, I think that they are sincere in their
promises. If they win without the people being mobilized, if
they happen to beat their opponent in the usual parade election
style, they will not be able to deliver whether as
Governor, Senator, Representative or President.
That's
the key message to convey to people: If they want to
stop this disconnect between enormous economic growth,
corporate profits and stock market prices on the one hand, and
a stagnation or a decline in the state of workers and
others in the economy as the disparities of wealth become so
enormous; if they want to stop that, if they want a
rising tide lifting all boats instead of a rising tide
lifting all yachts, then they have to strengthen
themselves in those five key roles that they play in our
political economy: Voter-citizen, worker, consumer, taxpayer,
and small saver-investor.

It may surprise some people to learn that about 90% of all the
congressional districts in the U.S. Congress are not competitive.
That is, they are either dominated by the Republican or the
Democratic incumbents and the opposing major political party
doesn't even field a candidate in about 70 of these
districts, in 1996. In many of the other districts just a nominal
candidate runs; some accountant who wants to embellish his resume,
throws his hat in the ring and spends a few bucks and gets 30%
of the vote.
That
is not a two-party system. That is basically a massively
entrenched one-party system. None-of-the-above will tend to
break that up. Because right now people in this country
cannot go to the polls and vote `no'. They can only vote
`yes' for some person on the ballot. If they can go to the ballot
and vote for none-of-the-above and if none-of-the-above gets more
votes than the other candidates on the ballot, it cancels the
election for that ballot-line and orders new elections in 30 to
45 days with new candidates.
I
think that will tend to bring more people out to the polls
because they won't be able to say they are staying home in
order to protest. Staying home in order to protest doesn't
mean a hill of beans to entrenched politicians. They don't care
if only 10% of the people vote. The fewer people who vote, the
fewer people they can saturate with their political television
ads. Instead of staying home, a binding none-of-the-above
brings them out.

Each of these signs measures 8½ by 11 inches.
Each file is available in either PostScript or PDF format
(there is no difference between them except in the way
the data is stored and represented). Both formats are
ideally suited for printing. If you aren't familiar with
either, get the Adobe Acrobat Viewer from the
Adobe
website. This will let you view the PDF file and
send it to your printer. Go to a copy place to laminate
them. i've taped these to my car side-doors, back window and
bicycle basket.
-dave

I hope you'll go back so metabolized that you will multiply your
efforts in church basements and union local halls and university
auditoriums and through your e-mail, so that this time it
is not just a surge. It's not just a movement. Not just a
demonstration. It is a permanent transformation of the way we
use our time and our knowledge and our estimate of our own
significance. Estimate of our own significance.
You
are in the top percent or two of people around the world
in terms of health, education, and the ability to make a
difference. That gives you a moral imperative to do so.
You have even a higher responsibility to do so. We are blessed in
this country. We have to make sure we stop the reverse slide
that is occurring even here. We have to go back home and develop
our own systems of influence, our own compelling networks,
whether through the Internet or through person-to-person contact.

The unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very
use of the law is the instrument of illegality. The very use of the
law is the instrument of illegality. The color of the law. And it
has become so intricate, and so broad-based, that law schools don't
even study it: government lawlessness. Not just Watergate.

. . . these tools for democracy have fairly common
characteristics. They are universally accessible, can reduce
government and other deficits, and are voluntary to use or band
together around. It matters not whether people are Republicans,
Democrats, or Independents. It matters only that Americans desire to
secure and use these facilities or tools.
Without
this reconstruction of our democracy through such
facilities for informed civic participation, as noted above, even the
most well-intentioned politicians campaigning for your vote cannot
deliver, if elected. Nor can your worries about poverty,
discrimination, joblessness, the troubled conditions of education,
environment, street and suite crime, budget deficits, costly and
inadequate health care, and energy boondoggles, to list a few, be
addressed constructively and enduringly. Developing these democratic
tools to strengthen citizens in their distinct roles as voters,
taxpayers, consumers, workers, shareholders, and students should be
very high on the list of any candidates commitments to you. Unless,
that is, they just want your vote, but would rather not have you
looking over their shoulder from a position of knowledge, strength
and wisdom.

Let me assure you that as discouraged as some of you may be about
the prospects of the world and the nation, remember: we are starting
from a base of knowledge, technology, and constitutional rights that
are far more enabling than many more unfortunate people abroad. We
can develop the mechanisms, the new toolbox of democracy, so that it
impacts our politics and our economy and our social culture in a way
that will produce turnarounds and changes and progress much faster
than many of you can envision. We can solarize our entire nation.
We can solarize our entire nation with passive and active solar
energy and energy efficiency. And replace those horrible
environmental and geopolitical and deficit problems in the next
generation alone.
And
what we need to do is to conclude each day individually by
saying, "we are never going to go through another day saying we
don't count, saying you can't fight city hall, saying that we don't
have time for our citizen duties." Because if we don't believe the
pursuit of justice is really the pursuit of personal as well as
social happiness, we have not learned the lessons of history.

Years ago the head of this big advertizing firm -- Foote, Cohen and
Belding in New York -- wrote a book called The Trouble With
Advertizing. He had a page saying that if he was in charge
he would ban political advertizing on the media that is under five
minutes. Because, as an expert advertizing specialist that he was,
he didn't think that you can get across anything other than emotional
imagery and that debased the political process. He came to this
conclusion because he did work for the Nixon campaign earlier.